Comments on: Mobile Ajax and Predictions of J2ME’s Demise

By: blackwatchplaid

blackwatchplaid — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:27:40 +0000

J2ME does suck. Most phones support old standards, that probably should never have been standardized because they were too limited for practical use. And even that support is buggy. Where were the reference implementations/apps and test suites? It’s too bad phone companies don’t upgrade JVMs or allow users to run their own.

Seems new mobile-related JSR’s are churned out weekly but the typical person’s handset doesn’t and won’t support important features for a while.

Having said all that, Java ME (Sun’s latest spelling) is all we have right now. And it can make some highly usable and useful apps — have you used the Java ME version of Google Maps?

Javascript and its ability to make URL requests and build a display is good. But it needs full access to the phone interface — all keypad events, easy menus and commands. Usability really matters on small, portable devices. It also needs a caching layer, to support offline and near-offline use.

Final rants: I’m sick of hearing how the next radio technology will bring broadband speed to mobiles. How many “G”s do we need before we get the speed and latency of at least dialup? And why do people accept mobile phone companies charging such high prices for transferring bits? Seems like mobile telcos would prefer that over voice, since it doesn’t require strictly real-time service.

Conclusion: We all have these relatively powerful, networked, little computers in our pockets, we should be getting more out of them and having full control of what they do. JavaME, AJAX, Flash-lite, whatever — as long as it is free, usable across mobile devices, and built on open standards, I’ll be happy.

Whew, thanks for listening.

By: krish

krish — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 12:50:28 +0000

I think that it will be a better idea to define a new JSR for J2ME. It will specify the ajax components with http/s connections. There may be a debate that network bandwidth will be an issue with j2ME + ajax environment , but i feel that this bottelneck will also be not an issue with 3G networks. Also AJAX works mainly as transporter, not a processing engine. For processing it need javascript, so java can be used in stead of javascript and and http can be used as transporter.

By: krishan

krishan — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 12:47:39 +0000

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 10:34:50 +0000

Chris,
are there “well-developed frameworks and toolkits” out there for mobile apps as well? If so, I’d much appreciate a link.
thanks
Michael

By: Scot

Scot — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:16:26 +0000

But wouldn’t an ajax solution always require a network connection? At least a J2ME app could degrade gracefully or be completely standalone, which would be a strength over ajax, both in terms of cost (Vodafone charge 7.50 GBP/MB – which makes online apps offputting) and reliabilty (the mobile phone network isn’t everywhere – I’m out of coverage for a good 40 minutes a day on my commute to and from work)

By: krazykarl

krazykarl — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:58:58 +0000

people keep forgetting that AJAX is a design pattern for the View – J2ME is a language that provides data processing, I/O, and View.

AJAX is a small tool – nothing more. Instead of people hyping ajax, why not spend that energy putting it to better use – or perhaps doing some constructive?